Top Ten Picks: Favorite Book Quotes

This week Random Bookish Ramblings has us thinking about our top ten favorite quotes from books, authors, and writers. She says this is easy because she is used to writing down random quotes and lines that she winds up loving. It's the opposite for me...same reason. There are SO many quotes that I've collected over the years. How on earth am I supposed to pick just ten? But, here we go....top ten favorites for today...for right now...in no particular order.

1. [about professors in general & Professor Gumbold in particular] "There's some here who seem gaga but aren't, there's some who don't seem gaga but are. He's gaga and it show." The Case of the Missing Bronte by Robert Barnard

2. "The circular wall of the Reading Room wrapped the scholars in a protective layer of books....The dome looked down on the scholars, and the scholars looked down on their books; and the scholars loved their books, stroking the pages with soft pale fingers. The pages responded to the finger's touch, and yielded their knowledge gladly to the scholars, who collected it in little boxes of file-cards. When the scholars raised their eyes from their desks they saw nothing to distract them, nothing out of harmony with their books....And the scholars dropped their eyese to their books again, fortified and consoled." The British Museum Is Falling Down by David Lodge

3. "There is no substitute for books in the life of a child." Recipe for a Magic Childhood by Mary Ellen Chase

4. "Jane is likely to be back in an hour with more books than she can carry. Let her loose where there are second-hand books and she's like a fox in a henhouse." Queen of the Flowers by Kerry Greenwood

5. "The Lopez Law of Life: Never be without a book. The day you forget to bring a book is the day you will get stuck in an elevator (trafic jam, etc.) for two hours and 45 minutes." by Manfred Lopez

6. "That's why I call this place the Haunted Bookshop. Haunted by the ghosts of books I haven't read. Poor uneasy spirits, they walk and walk around me. There's only one way to lay the ghost of a book, and that's to read it." The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher Morley

7. "The trouble with bookshops is that they are as bad as pubs. You start with one and then you drift to another, and before you know where you are you are on a gigantic book-binge." Bodies in a Bookshop by R. T. Campbell (one of my all-time favorites!)

8. "...there is no rule in the detective's handbook that says I can't enjoy myself while I am waiting. And if there is, it's silly and I don't propose to take any notice of it." Murder in the Dark by Kerry Greenwood (I love Phryne Fisher!)

9. [Harriet Vane] "All my life I have been wandering in the dark--but now I have found your heart--and am satisfied." [Lord Peter] "And what do all the great words come to in the end, but that?--I love you--I am at rest with you--I have come home." Busman's Honeymoon by Dorothy L Sayers

10. "What is love?...it penetrates the soul more than any other thing. Nothing exists that so fills and binds the heart as love does." The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco